


the place we've reached together

by jan



Category: Chihayafuru
Genre: Established Relationship, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-10
Updated: 2014-06-10
Packaged: 2018-02-04 04:18:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1765198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jan/pseuds/jan





	the place we've reached together

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inelegantly (Lir)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lir/gifts).



Taichi wakes to a strip of sunlight falling across his face, the scent of just-cooked rice in the next room, and Chihaya half-curled around him.

Another ordinary day. Another small miracle.

He closes his eyes again. There was once, a long time ago, when he knew exactly how his life would go, the goals and milestones plotted out years in advance by parental expectations: a good middle school, a good high school, a medical degree from Tokyo University, a perfect and colourless existence. Chihaya had changed all that. Not the formal steps, perhaps, but all the days he'd lived in the process of taking them. She'd introduced him to the vivid, passionate world of karuta, to the necessity of failure. And across the years, over and over again, she'd pulled him forward, pulled him along in her restless, unstoppable wake.

As she was still doing. Whatever he'd expected from university life -- whatever he'd expected to result from the tumult of their high school days -- it hadn't been this.

Yes, it took several repeated confessions from both him and Arata, some extremely awkward conversations, and some anguished soul-searching about how he really felt about his one-time rival in love. But when it came down to it, in the end, Chihaya was the one who'd seen a way forward for the three of them. Together.

So, the medical place in Tokyo University: predictable. The expensive one-bedroom apartment in a relatively central neighbourhood: unthinkable for most people, but not for a mother intent on cutting her medical student son's commute and with the financial resources to do so.

Arata as a roommate: unexpected, but with a certain inevitability about it.

Arata as a boyfriend: ditto.

Chihaya coming round every now and then to crash at their place (with a plausible cover story, because reality still intrudes upon their amazing, ridiculous arrangement, mainly in the form of what their parents would think if they knew) and her unthinking habit of snuggling up to whomever is within reach: something which 17-year-old Mashima Taichi would never have dared imagine.

Not that everything has changed, now that whatever the three of them have is officially labelled 'romantic'. Chihaya still treats him with the same unselfconscious closeness of their elementary school days, just... more so. Such as now, when she's curled close to him, making his heart race in a way that -- Taichi's sure -- hers doesn't. He didn't have to reconsider how he felt about Chihaya, when they agreed upon this all those months ago. He's not sure if she had to; if she's even done so.

But then, in the grand scheme of things, that's hardly something to complain about. Arata's waiting for them to wake up. Breakfast will get cold. But the alarm hasn't gone off yet, so Taichi lets himself lie there a little longer, marvelling at this precious, ordinary morning; a present moment which wasn't chosen for him years ago.

/

Chihaya squeezes her eyes shut tighter, in lieu of opening them and facing the harsh reality of morning. She knows that she's probably oversleeping, that she has a stupidly long commute ahead of her, but Taichi is warm and his hair smells nice and ah, futons are really soft, aren't they? She's too used to her bed at home.

Speaking of which. It still feels a little weird to be the only one of the three of them who lives at home, even though her friends at university do the same. But then, a lot of this was weird to begin with, she supposes. Like this, like how Taichi's so comfortable to hold (not as much as the giant limited-edition Daddy Bear plush she has, but she won't tell him that), how this sort of thing has become a routine. Not that it was easy at first -- she went through several mental rounds of _but I've always hugged Taichi or jumped on him or leaned on him on the commute home-- but now we're all, well, together, so doesn't that make it weird?-- but it's_ Taichi _, it can't possibly be weird_ \-- but now! Now it's natural as breathing.

Besides, isn't this Taichi as he's always been? Patient and warm and _there_.

Chihaya smiles sleepily to herself, nuzzles the back of Taichi's neck. The morning can wait.

 

* * *

 

It's different with Arata. She's spent so long waiting to see him again, grown so used to only ever meeting him on the karuta mat, that it was strange when he actually came to Tokyo. He's no longer a distant promise or a voice carried over the magpie-bridge of phone calls; he's here, within her reach, close enough to see every single day.

She and Arata play so many games together, now that they can. Sometimes they make do with a tape recorder, and then Taichi gets back to the flat and nearly trips over Chihaya as she's scrambling to retrieve a card. Sometimes Taichi reads for them, and it's like that winter so many years ago. Sometimes they visit each other's karuta clubs -- it's the one big flaw in Chihaya's university life, the fact that the other two have Toudai's club and she's practically had to build her own again -- and Chihaya loves how Arata shines in battle, loves to watch her new team falling in love with Arata's karuta too.

But then. But then -- and it's weird at first, like some sort of blasphemy -- the fact that she doesn't only ever meet Arata on the karuta mat means that... well, that they do other things, too. Things that aren't karuta. Meeting for lunch somewhere in the city, or hanging around in their flat, or visiting a park. And she's beginning to recognise another Arata: not the Arata of the tatami mat, with his ice-clear gaze and controlled, deliberate power, but the Arata who talks excitedly about the other members of Toudai's club, whose startled laugh rings light as a bell, whose hands are warm and strong and surprisingly large (she bets it gives him an advantage in karuta).

She still feels like she's burning up in his presence, every now and then. In the quiet moments when they're alone, or when they're both on the couch and Taichi gives them that soft, fond look from across the room because he doesn't realise that she's looking, and Chihaya's suddenly all too aware of how close they are, fitting together like a complete verse.

But as she watches this other Arata, the one who isn't always as cool and forceful as water, she realises that maybe she makes him burn up inside, too. The bright flash of autumn leaves on a river; a deep, red love.

 

* * *

 

Taichi gets back one evening to find Arata preparing dinner, which is fairly standard, but with a furrowed brow, which isn't. It's not the intense, ferocious expression which Taichi recognises from Arata's rare defeats in karuta, either; there's something sadder about it, something lost.

"Can I help?" he asks, setting his bag down.

Arata flinches, whirls around. "Taichi! That was dangerous, I'm still chopping the vegetables..."

"Sorry, sorry, I thought you'd heard me come in." He steps closer, but Arata's already turned back to the kitchen counter, and the rhythm of his knife starts up again. "Um. Something on your mind?"

"It's nothing."

Taichi leans against the wall, observes Arata's profile. That beautiful, focused look, something Taichi's always admired, now seems a shade pained.

Eventually Arata relents: "Chihaya's busy, that's all."

"Mm-hm."

"I haven't seen her much lately, with this term's schedule. Thought that maybe we could meet up today. But she's tied up with her university's karuta club, and that's completely understandable, there's a lot of work to be done there. It's really nothing."

Taichi waits. Arata's knife crunches through the vegetables, raps out a steady rhythm against the chopping board.

"I guess... I just thought that it'd mean a little more," Arata says at last, quietly, as he sets the knife down. "The fact that I came to Tokyo."

Ah. Right. Taichi tries to think of something to say, something more than the obvious _Of course it does_ , but Arata's already going on: "No, that's unfair, I _know_ it is, I just..." He takes his glasses off, pinches the bridge of his nose. "Sorry. Don't mind me."

And then he turns and walks into the bedroom instead.

Which is not something that Taichi's going to accept as a conversation-ender, so he follows. Arata's seated on the floor, just on the edge of his futon, looking a little red about the eyes.

Taichi hasn't yet become the better person he's always wanted to be. So yes, there's a small, traitorous feeling of relief at seeing Arata -- kind, unselfish Arata -- capable of resentment after all. Another way in which he's only human.

"I always knew it, you know." He sits down beside Arata, leans back on his hands. "That there was always going to be another partner in any relationship with Chihaya, and it was always going to be karuta."

Arata shoots him a half-amused, half-annoyed look, as if to say _could you take this a bit more seriously?_ There are plenty of things Taichi could say in response, none of them particularly kind. What does Arata know? He's experiencing this for the first time. He wasn't the one who stayed beside Chihaya all this while, watching her love for karuta grow and grow, knowing that karuta and Arata were -- if not exactly the same thing -- inextricably linked in her mind.

But then, of course, Arata didn't get to be beside her at all.

Taichi sighs to himself; reaches over and takes Arata's hand, intertwining their fingers. "Look. It's just how Chihaya is, you know? She gets caught up in karuta. Doesn't mean she cares about you any less. About this."

"I know. Of course I know. And I know this was her idea, that she brought us all together, but sometimes... sometimes I wonder just how much she sees this as, well, a relationship," Arata says, fingers curling around Taichi's, and Taichi feels another twinge of relief: so it isn't just him. So Arata has that worry, too. "I didn't think we'd go on the usual dates or anything like that. Chihaya is Chihaya. But I'd thought that when I came to Tokyo..."

"I'd thought that when you came to Tokyo, you'd both just play karuta against each other all day."

"I wish we could," Arata replies automatically. Taichi laughs. Arata goes pink, but presses on: "But even so... I guess it's strange to say this, but sometimes I wish we all had more time together that wasn't for karuta."

_That isn't strange at all, you karuta idiots_ , Taichi thinks fondly. Out loud he says: "I'm sure we can. Chihaya's still getting her club together, she'll have more free time soon. And until then. Well. I'm-- I mean, it's not like you're alone."

Arata blinks.

Then he laughs that light, soft laugh of his, the one which sends a not-unpleasant shiver up Taichi's spine. "You're right. Thanks, Taichi." He leans in--

At which point the front door flies open and Chihaya bursts into the apartment.

"Arata? Taichi?"

They hear her crossing the small living room; Arata scrambles to his feet, but she's already in the doorway, beaming at them both. "I haven't seen you both in days! Practice ended really late, I'm sorry -- was that dinner outside? Can I have some once it's ready?"

"Chihaya..." Arata begins, sounding oddly choked up.

She looks at him, surprised; then looks at Taichi, still seated on the edge of the futon; then back to Arata, and Taichi doesn't know what sort of strange Chihaya-esque calculations are taking place, but seconds later she tackles Arata onto the futon, sweeping Taichi down with them both.

"I'm home," she announces.

"You're heavy," Taichi complains, making a half-hearted attempt at escaping. Has she always had such arm strength? It must be the karuta practice.

"Taichi! You're supposed to say--"

"Welcome home," Arata says, and kisses her.

It's brief, just a greeting, but Chihaya laughs and kisses him again and takes her time. And then she turns towards Taichi, as does Arata, and in this moment there's no room for doubt or fears or lofty poetry: there's just the three of them, together, in a place they've made their own.


End file.
